Sign in Subscribe
Android

Obsidian v1.0.5 scores 7/10

Stone

• 3 min read
Obsidian v1.0.5 scores 7/10

I wanted to love Obsidian for Android because it's Canadian but I don't, not yet. It made me think way too much to use it to a point of frustration. The UI is awkward on a smartphone as it's trying to replicate the desktop UI. Initial loading is quite slow. It has markdown support, outlining, and the extensibility is incredible with themes and plugins supported by a large and loyal community of Developers / Scripters.

I also posted a review of their other app, see Dynalist v1.4.15 scores 8/10. Soon I will be publishing a post on how to use Obsidian with Nextcloud on Android, it's painful but doable so be sure to subscribe to get notified.

About

Ugly

  • Couldn't figure out how to "close a note"
  • Pin a note and the UI is almost unusable, the note becomes one column wide. It took me forever to figure out what the issue was until I unpinned the note.
  • Once I split the view vertically, I couldn't figure out how to un-split it (see first bullet)
  • Multiple open notes is useless on a smartphone, at least with the current UI. Took me forever to figure out how to close them (hint: search for "close" in command menu)

Bad

  • Map is not that usable on a smartphone, but I haven't linked many of my imported notes so more to learn here. Bonus points for being able to hide it :) Also I haven't tried it on a tablet yet
  • UI is confusing moving between notes
  • Splitting UI vertically on a smartphone is not useful, again trying to apply the same UI constructs as the desktop app
  • Commands on the side describes key combinations like "hot key"  Ctrl+S to save but my smartphone doesn't have a keyboard. Maybe this is an homage to the BlackBerry folks :)
  • Help doesn't appear to be specific to the mobile but shared with the desktop, e.g. Ctrl+P for command palette
  • No export to PDF
  • No export to formatted text into an email
  • No import file in the app that I could find
  • No WebDAV support – which I need for Nextcloud integration
  • Took me a while to figure out the toolbar had more options, slides horizontally (see Great section)
  • Markdown format importer didn't make sense to me to be so prominent when I couldn't find a way to import a file in the app

Good

  • Markdown support
  • Text formatting: bold, italics, code, headings, quotes
  • Numbered lists
  • Headings
  • Hyperlinks – need to lear
  • Text highlighting built in and @chetachiiii's Highlightr plugin extends it further
  • Tag pane but I wish they were more prominent / first class citizens on the side bar
  • Search results sort by date created, modified, filename
  • Star a note and filter starred notes
  • Inline checklist items [x] [ ]

Great

  • Indent / Outdent for outlining
  • Tag support
  • Audio recording! – but you have to enable it in settings
  • Dark theme / mode
  • Inline images
  • Show and hide sections
  • Cross device sync - expensive
  • Toolbar very handy with formatting options
  • Customizable toolbar – you can re-order or hide the ones you don't use
  • Ability to specify an attachment folder
  • Tons of settings, customizations like font size
  • Share a note as Markdown '.md' file
  • Powerful search which I am still learning
  • The ability to have multiple "vaults" – basically folders of notes but with separate themes etc. which is interesting

Awesome

  • Can use it completely offline without a cloud
  • Linking between notes with [[note]]
  • Hundreds of plugins. I haven't tried many and wonder how many of those work well or were designed for mobile vs. desktop
  • Themes, my favorite is Sanctum

Sign up for more like this.

Enter your email
Subscribe